Flexible materials of a plastic composition, particularly when foamed, have found use in the field of textiles on the decorative side of fabrics and as coatings on individual textile units such as yarns, strands, and threads. Some materials can be processed as a coating on a strand to produce a coated strand having unique characteristics depending upon the method employed in processing the strand.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,761,346, issued Sept. 25, 1973 to Caroselli et al. discloses a system wherein a plastisol is applied to a linear textile material such as a strand of glass filaments by passing the textile material through an excess of plastisol via two coating/wiping dyes and then advancing the coated textile material into an oven for partial fusion. Subsequently, a second plastisol is applied via a second set of two coating/wiping dyes, followed by a second thermal treatment sufficient to first fuse the coatings and then to activate the blowing agent therein to create a foam-like structure. The second plastisol may or may not contain a blowing agent. Without the blowing agent in the second coating the outer surface of the strand will not have the pits or voids therein which would have been formed if a blowing agent were present.
However, in either instance a nozzle sprays water onto the strand as it leaves the second oven to cool the strand. It has been found that by directing a stream of water against the surface of such a strand while the coating is still in a deformable or tacky state the resulting coated strand will have a wrinkled and dented outer surface even when the second coating does not contain a blowing agent. It is believed that the immediate rapid cooling of the strand by the spray of water contacting the coated strand immediately after leaving the oven causes the coating material to shrink forming the wrinkled outer surface. Since the coating material is still in a delicate tacky or deformable state, the impact of large drops of water upon the strand tends to form indentations therein.
Therefore, it is believed that cooling the coating of the strand according to the principles of this invention permits the coating to expand to and remain at substantially the maximum extent thereof.